2012 Cultural Olympiad

Harmonie were privileged to have been selected to take part in the Music Nation event as part of the London 2012 Cultural Olympiad.

Joined by 4 local groups to present a celebration of the Olympics, the music was connected with the Games. Some of it was composed specifically as theme tunes from particular years while other pieces embraced the spirit of the Games.

We were particularly proud and excited to be premiering “Olympic Hero”, a piece written specially for this event by a member of the band , Chris Holley, which proved to be a rousing success on the night and was greatly appreciated by the audience.

Harmonie have been part of Making Music’s “Adopt a Composer” scheme and our composer Aaron Parker wrote “Dancing Rings” for us. This was also successfully premiered on the night.

The fabulous dancing of the Julie Noble School of Dance provided great accompaniment to many of the pieces. The St. Joseph’s School Choir and St. Bernard’s Chamber Choir provided superb vocals as well as excellent virtuoso performances which the audience loved. Added to all this was the unique and entertaining performance by The Arthur Bugler School African Drum Group.

All in all it was a fantastic success for the band with a full house of around 450 people showing their appreciation with a standing ovation at the Grays Civic Hall at the conclusion.

We are delighted to announce that the concert raised £1200 for the charity Phab (physically handicapped and able bodied) whose aim is to promote and encourage people of all abilities to come together on equal terms, to achieve complete inclusion within the wider community.

Please follow this link to the Making Music video of the event. If you don’t have time to watch the whole video then skip to 3 minutes 16 seconds to see the band and an interview with our MD (we are then featured until the end).